WEBVTT - Can't Stop, Won't Stop (Working) 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.240 Hello, and welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast which brings the 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:15.600 global economy to you. Do you know why the retirement 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.239 age and so many countries is sixty five? And it's 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.919 all thanks to Otto von Bismarck, the first German chancellor 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:25.000 who created the world's first social security system back in 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.639 eighty and he started with the retirement age of seventy. 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:31.040 Then he brought it down to sixty five because back 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:34.440 then almost no one survived even that long. I was 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.280 reminded of that top fact by one of the investors 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:39.920 on a panel I moderated this week at the Milk 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:44.159 and Global Conference in Los Angeles, where billionaires and wannabe 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:47.440 billionaires and hundreds of other people all gather to talk 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.239 about investing the global economy and when they have any 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:54.280 spare time, making the world a better place. The theme 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:58.200 this year has been driving shared prosperity, and there's been 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:00.720 some discussion about how to save enough are happy and 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.240 secure retirement. Of course, one way a lot of people 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.200 today are investing in their retirement is by working and 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:11.679 earning well past sixty. I met someone here with a 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.600 non traditional take on that. You'll hear my interview with 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:18.160 her in a minute first. One of our Federal Reserve reporters, 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.440 Matt Bosler, has this story about older workers in the 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:35.600 US and what it means for the economy. I was 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.280 getting a whole six d and eighty two dollars a 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:42.360 month on Social Security, and I had bills, and sometimes 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:47.720 I had to decide between groceries or medication, and sometimes 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.840 I had to decide whether grocers were good this week 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:56.800 or next week. That's Doris O'Connor. She's sixty eight years 0:01:56.800 --> 0:01:59.200 old and is part of the growing share of Americans 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:04.280 who work well into traditional retirement years. O'Connor is a 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:06.680 native of Brooklyn who has lived in Dallas for the 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:10.079 past twenty years. Her story is a relatively happy one 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.640 from an economic perspective. She's well enough to keep working, 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.639 she finds her job fulfilling, and she's contributing to America's economy, 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.040 but O'Connor doesn't have enough money to quit. Her situation 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.800 is far from unique. Retirement insecurity as a position many 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.560 baby boomers find themselves in that's reshaped the US labor 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:32.280 market thanks to a new pool of workers available in 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:36.959 an economy that's thirsty for them. At the same time, 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.320 the more older workers, there are the less opportunity younger 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.440 employees have to rise through the ranks, and the bigger 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:47.040 pool of workers overall means employers have more power to 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.800 pay lower wages, something that's been a puzzle in this 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:56.200 economic expansion. About of Americans over the age of sixty five. 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.440 We're working or looking for work in March, up from 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:02.919 twelve per sent two decades ago. That's more than four 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.600 million extra people, or more than the entire combined US 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:12.120 workforces of Walmart, Amazon, Ups, and Target. For Doris O'Connor, 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:14.880 her path back to work wasn't so simple. It was 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.520 hard because every day, every day you go online and 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:21.040 you look for jobs and you try to find something 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:24.720 that thinks that you think fits your skill level, and 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:28.240 you put in an application online and you never hear anything. 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:31.760 And I also had the additional problem that I didn't 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.400 have any computer skills. So she went to get computer 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.640 training at the Senior Source, a local nonprofit organization, and 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.560 they ended up giving her a job. Her title is 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.080 intake coordinator and she points people who call in for 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.720 help in the right direction. The increase in working among 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.480 older adults is happening for many reasons. People are healthier 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.080 office jobs are less taxing than the manufacturing and farm 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:00.000 work of decades past, But a lot of it boils 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:06.520 down to not being financially ready to retire. People are 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.320 living longer, and there's been a major shift in pension 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:12.400 plans that moves a lot of the responsibility for saving 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:17.200 from the employer to the employee. People aren't that good 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.200 at planning for their own financial futures. As it turns out, 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.240 about half of households are at risk of being unable 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:27.880 to maintain their lifestyles into retirement. According to research from 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:33.919 Boston College, the biggest fear of the older adult is 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:38.599 surprisingly not death, it's running out of money. That's Steve Benton. 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.480 He's a financial counselor at the Elder Financial Safety Center 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:45.760 in Dallas, which is part of the Senior Source. He 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.600 helped introduce us to Doris O'Connor and Uh, they are 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.839 woefully prepared. These baby boomers are entering the retirement years 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:59.320 and don't have enough assets. They didn't plan. As a demographic, 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:03.640 they have been known spenders. This is the first generation 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:07.400 to ever reach retirement and still have mortgages. Benton talks 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.039 all the time to aging workers who haven't saved enough 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.520 for retirement, or who are worried that in a world 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:18.640 of high longevity, they'll outlive their retirement stores. Life expectancy 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.479 in America is just shy of seventy nine years, but 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:24.000 that average is dragged down by folks who die in 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.679 middle age. Americans who live past the age of sixty 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.640 five can expect to live to eighty four for men 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:35.080 or nearly eighty seven for women. One in four sixty 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.400 five year olds will live past ninety and one in 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.359 ten past ninety five, based on Social Security Administration data. 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.520 That's a long time to make retirement savings last, especially 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:47.880 in a world where people are falling back on less 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:53.120 reliable savings outlets. Alicia Mannell at Boston College has spent 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:57.400 years researching the topic. A large swath of the population 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:02.520 has a huge financial incentive to keep working, and working 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.359 longer is really a powerful tool. Sticking around the labor 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.640 market allows people to delay drawing on their Social Security 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:12.719 and four o one case plus, it adds additional years 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.200 for extra saving. Given that Manala is happy people are 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.120 working longer, I think it's good news. If I had 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.160 my way, if I were a queen, I would like 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.200 to change the conversation in the United States, so that 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:28.960 we established seventy as the UH sort of the national 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.479 retirement age, and there are a couple of reasons for that. 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:34.559 That's the age at which you get your highest Social 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:40.080 Security benefit, and so it keeps that ratio constant as 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.479 participation climbs for people in their older working years. It 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.120 could help to delay when folks draw on their Social Security. 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.080 That can make a big difference in how long that 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:53.359 money lasts. Susan Weinstock showed us just how much using 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:56.839 the A A r p S Retirement Calculator. She's vice 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:00.080 president for financial Resiliency at the Group in Washington. In 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.480 so it asks about you your marital status, your age, 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:09.159 or salary um. Sometimes the numbers are staggering and can 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.880 scare people, and we definitely don't want that. So if 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:14.360 you plug in the parameters, it shoots out both how 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:17.560 much you need to retire and maintain your lifestyle and 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:23.040 when you will start running out of money. Say you're 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.200 a single, sixty year old woman, your income is fifty 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:30.160 thou dollars, you save five percent towards retirement each year, 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:32.680 and you have two hundred thousand dollars in your four 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.760 oh one k You'll face a short fall starting at 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.440 age eighty if you retire at sixty five and want 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:42.120 to maintain your lifestyle, But if you work until age seventy, 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:47.440 you won't fall short until age eighty nine. Retirement insecurity 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.520 is a problem that's here to stay, as younger Americans 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.320 are even more likely to lack enough money to retire, 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:57.560 according to Boston College data. That's because of the decline 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:00.840 of traditional pension plans, as well as events such as 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:04.600 the Great Recession, which forced some homeowners to leave their houses. 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:08.720 It's not just the United States. Around the world, people 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.480 are working longer, and among the G seven economies, the 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.160 US ranks only behind Japan in labor force participation for 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:21.320 ages sixty five and above. If older Americans can find work, 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:23.880 it's good for the economy because it makes for more 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:28.040 trained and available labor. It's not always an easy transition, though. 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.320 Like Doris O'Connor, older folks regularly need to build new 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:35.640 skills in order to land jobs, and even then they're 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:38.920 often taking on lesser roles than they're used to. Here's 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.959 Steve Benton and Dallas again the jobs that they are 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.000 used to and having at a certain financial level are 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:47.800 not there anymore, and so they are having to take 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:51.320 less and in fact it's often, uh, you almost have 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:56.800 to dumb down their resumes because people won't hire them. 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:04.840 They tend to accept lesser. If you ask folks who 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.600 have been on the market recently, some employers might need 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.839 to adjust their mindsets around older employees. Reports of age 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.600 discrimination abound. Six out of ten older workers have seen 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:20.360 or experienced age discrimination in the workplace, and of those 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.679 say it is common. Based on one a a r 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:29.679 P study research backs that up. Study of forty applications 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.800 for over thirteen thousand jobs in eleven states found evidence 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:38.200 of age discrimination older applicants. Those between the ages of 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.920 sixty four and sixty six were more frequently denied job 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:46.280 interviews than middle age applicants. That bias was especially present 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:50.360 against older women, something O'Connor is very conscious of. Before 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:52.360 I got this job, I had someone tell me that 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.680 I was just too old and I would not never 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.120 ever get a job, that I should just give up. 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:02.120 And I think that's what's happening to some of my friends. 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.000 O'Connor says she's thankful that she managed to get her 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.600 current role. She makes thirty nine dollars a year, and 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.440 that's helping her to pay off eight dollars in student 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:14.640 loans from her bachelor's and master's degree, which she went 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:17.720 back to get in two thousand five. She started a 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.959 savings account, and she's even able to afford the occasional 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:25.120 extra like a bottle of wine or some meat. Now, 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.560 she hopes that the conversation around hiring older workers changes. 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:33.640 Everything is about people needing medical help or medical aids, 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:38.560 and you know, it seems to sound like older people 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:42.319 aren't fit. We have lots of experience, we have lots 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:46.640 of wisdom, we have lots of help to give. I'm 0:10:46.640 --> 0:11:02.360 Matthew Bosler with Bloomberg News in New York. Now I 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:04.360 came across the speaker here at the Milk and Conference 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.240 who spent much of her academic life thinking and writing 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:11.360 about these issues, Professor Teresa Gilla Ducci, professor of economics 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:13.640 of the New School for Social Research in New York. 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:15.760 I'm delighted to say I was able to pull her 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.800 into an empty meeting room to chat. Here's our interview. 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.360 Thank you very much for doing this. Now, we heard 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.800 quite a lot in that piece about the human side 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.120 of this trend of people working later in life, and 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:37.320 it was quite a positive story by and large that 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:39.760 we heard. But I guess we should also be thinking 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:43.000 about what it means for the economy and society as 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.040 a whole. Is there anything that we should worry about 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:50.120 in this trend um. There's a big chunk of the 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:54.360 American population who are over sixty five, and that's a 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:58.920 growing chunk of people who don't have enough income to 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.000 retire and they have to keep on working. And since 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.760 that group is going to grow in the tens of millions, 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.680 I am focusing on that group. These are the people 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:13.440 who have to work for money. Their fallback position is 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:18.680 basically poverty, and therefore the employer can tell them take 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.800 it or leave it. They are working on the employer's terms, 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.959 not their own terms. And this means much more inequality 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:30.200 in America in a way that is felt. But it's 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:33.440 harder to measure than wealth, the income inequality. I mean, 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.080 there's a lot of things they're worth thinking about. I 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:39.480 guess one thing I'm struck by, you know, as an economist, 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:41.960 and when I was first learning economics, the thing that 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.439 came across again and again as is the closest thing 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.840 to a free lunch in policy terms was raising the 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.720 retirement age. It always made sense. It made the pension 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:54.200 system more affordable. You figured it was probably kind of 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.560 good for people to work longer, and it all, you know, 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.520 it makes sure that reduced the amount out of time 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:03.480 that people were going to be reliant on their pension income. 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:08.560 But the worry I always had was you're treating a 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:10.720 lot of very different people the same, and when you're 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.280 sixty five or sixty you could be very different because 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.000 you could have had a very different work pattern of work. 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.240 So you can have and if you look at the numbers, 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:22.240 I know you have a lot of people who have 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.680 been working since they were eighteen, working in physical labor, 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.040 don't get anything like the sixty. They might have dropped 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.880 out by the labor force by fifty. In the UK certainly, 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.920 and in the US that happens. Does that affect how 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:39.400 we think about formally changing the retirement age, even though 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:42.520 we encourage people to stay as long as they want to. 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.000 I really like the idea that went On the surface, 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:48.560 it sounds like a free lunch. Everybody can just work 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.040 a little bit longer. I hear this from my colleagues 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.280 to say, it's a plus plus for everybody to work 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.160 longer um. And they want to raise the retirement age 0:13:58.240 --> 0:14:02.560 to seventy, which that people aren't guaranteed good jobs into 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.439 their seventy It means that retirement benefits are cut at 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.280 sixty two and sixty three and so forth. So what 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.280 happens if you cut benefits for people who retire before 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:16.240 seventy You create inequality in the United States that we 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:20.240 never had before. What our system had done up until 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.840 now has let the rich and the poor, the blue collar, 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:28.800 pink collar, light blue collar, and white collar really have 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.160 the same amount of retirement time. They educated work longer, 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.840 but they started their work life, you know later. We 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:39.680 don't count graduate school as work. Really it's it's it's effort, 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.600 it's um involvement. But it's not the same as having 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:47.120 started work when you're eighteen. And therefore about everybody had 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:52.240 about fifteen to sixteen years of retirement time. But if 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:55.880 you're going to cut benefits, then people who are die 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.800 sooner are going to have to work longer, and you're 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:03.160 telling them you at twelve years thirteen years, where people 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.680 who have better educations do like their jobs work a 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:12.240 little bit longer, live a lot longer. Life expectancy in 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.640 the United States on average has gone up, but it's 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.160 only gone up for people above the meeting income. So 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:23.920 the top half of Americans have gotten all the longevity gains, 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.160 just like the top half of all Americans got all 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:30.600 of the wage increases. So that's just building in more 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.520 inequality in terms of retirement time and satisfaction at the 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:37.200 end of our lives um in America, and we didn't 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.760 celebrate the equality that we had achieved before. So so 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:44.320 there's definitely lots of different size to this. You know, 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.720 that's there's there's some positive aspects, but also we worry 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:53.920 about the longer term entrenching some of these inequalities. What 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:56.720 does that mean for policy? I mean, how should governments 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.240 be thinking about it? Because it's certainly true that you know, 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.560 they are still all getting it around the world, getting 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.240 advised to raise their retirement age. I mean in Europe 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:06.320 that's usually like number one on the list when you 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:07.760 say how are you going to fix Europe? You know 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:11.520 a lot of countries it's often about raising the retirement age. 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.800 How should we think about it? Well, first of all, 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.480 let's look at UM the G seven the rich large 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.680 countries in Europe and in Japan and the United States. 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:26.560 UM longevity for people in the United States is the shortest, 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.480 so people who reach sixty five and the G seven, 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:34.440 the Americans live the shortest. Look at the retirement age, 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:37.080 it's actually the Americans and the Japanese who work a 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:40.400 lot longer. So it did make sense for the Italian 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.360 to UM martial their policies to make sure that the 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.600 labor market was open to Italians who wanted to work 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.400 past the age of fifty five. That makes perfect sense, 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:56.160 but that broad brush does not work for the United States. 0:16:56.600 --> 0:17:00.920 To have United States workers work even longer would mean 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:05.240 that they're working more hours per week, more weeks per year, 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:10.119 and more years per lifetime than most other countries, especially 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:14.240 rich countries, were really are outliers. It also doesn't make 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:18.439 sense for the economy to force older people UM to 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:23.160 work longer without an enormous effort for training, UM and 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.600 for and and to eliminate age discrimination, because what we're 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:31.920 doing in the United States is asking ten thousand people 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:34.840 who reach sixty every day to stay in the labor 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:39.560 market UM when they don't have a good fallback position. 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.240 So we are asking um older people to go to 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:47.040 Amazon warehouses, to go behind the counters of drug stores, 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:52.159 of CBS, to wipe tables at McDonald's um without protection. 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.960 That is actually a big enough number, with ten thousand 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.720 a day to affect the entire labor market. So our 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:05.480 biggest occupation, no growth is happening probably in the UK too, 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.199 and personal care and hope health care. And you have 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:11.119 two kinds of people working in that job. You have 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:15.000 minority younger women who are mothers, and you have older 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:19.320 white women. It's all it's older women increasingly taking care 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:23.560 of even older women. Those are the worst jobs available 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:28.120 that it's back breaking work. It there is evidence that 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:32.400 work for people over sixty five of certain occupations actually 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:38.040 brings on morbidity and foreshortens their life. So it isn't 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:41.359 that's really the dark side. And these are the costs 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:47.399 um and unattended consequences of this cheery policy for people 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.119 to work longer. In terms of policy, we need to 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:54.320 make sure that everybody reaches sixty two sixty five, after 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.000 forty five years of of a work life, with enough 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.320 money to walk away from a job if they want to. 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.280 And we have to protect every adult in a civilized 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:08.439 society a job if they wanted Asia, discrimination should be 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:14.760 illegal and effectively a non existent everywhere. Um. But having 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:19.160 an affirmative policy to make work attractive to older workers 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:21.680 is very different than the policies we have in America, 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:25.000 which is basically forcing people to work or else they'll 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:29.320 be poor. I guess one final point is you've mentioned 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.840 it implicitly, but if we're going to have people around 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:36.120 the world potentially working longer for a mixture of reasons, 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.399 it maybe I think in the in the US, maybe 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.399 some of the disproportionate amount of the growth is coming 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:45.679 in these more worrying segments that you've talked about. But 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:49.000 it's also true around the world that there's plenty of 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:52.720 quote unquote is kind of good late work happening. Do 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.040 we think in general that's going to have an impact 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:57.840 on productivity growth? Because that's obviously the worry when we 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.159 already have quite low productivity growth, You know, should we 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:05.280 expect demographics to keep productivity low? Um, you're an economist, 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.439 and um, and I think everyone can intuitively understand the 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:13.639 economic lessons. If employers can get workers cheap, there is 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:18.000 no incentive for an employers to improve productivity, to improve 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:20.760 the way they do things, to add more UM and 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:23.720 better machines to the worker. You don't add any more capital. 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:26.439 If you can get a lot of workers cheap, then 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:30.879 productivity UM is going to drop. So I'm afraid that 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:33.520 if you just have lots of people who would rather 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.960 not work still have to work, that that will lower 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:41.240 average productivity. Employers have to be in a situation where 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:43.840 they have to draw people into their jobs to make 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:48.840 it attractive, and that's often um higher pay and probably 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:52.520 a lot more productivity. So I see this big push 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:57.600 for huge increases in labor supply to be productivity diminishing, 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:00.840 not enhancing. Professor going to thank you very much. It's 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:03.359 a it's a definitely a different kind of take and 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:08.440 a slightly more mix take on this phenomenon we see 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:18.920 everywhere of older people working. Thank you very much. Finally, 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:21.240 because I'm in l A, of course, I have to 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.320 talk about the movies. Now, twenty years ago, it took 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:27.600 the film Titanic more than three months to become the 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.520 first film to take one billion dollars at the box 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:34.480 office worldwide. Now, billion dollar global blockbusters are to a 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.840 penny almost and the final episode of the Disney owned 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.359 Marvel Avengers series. Endgame has already taken more than a 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:45.679 billion after just one record breaking opening weekend. I can't 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:48.479 help thinking this tells us something about the world today, 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:51.320 other than the fact that we all like a good superhero. 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:53.280 I took a break from Milkin to go to the 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:56.320 Bloomberg l A Bureau to get more from our entertainment 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.480 reporter Anusia SAKUI now Inusia, for the four people left 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:02.639 in the world who don't already know about it, just 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:07.080 talked me through those record breaking numbers for Avengers Endgame. Well, 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:10.040 there are so many stuffing. I mean, it's broken a 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:15.720 huge raft of records. It's the fastest to a billion dollars, 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:21.439 it's the biggest opening weekend domestically and globally. It's really 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:25.240 ready the tenth highest grossing globally of all time, and 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:28.679 just after six days globally already it's earned something like 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.520 one point through billion dollars, which is you know what 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:34.520 you'd hope after a long run, even for a very 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:38.000 successful film. So that gives you an idea. Even just 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:40.080 after the first weekend, we haven't even got into the 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:42.280 second weekend, and I see it had a pretty healthy 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.679 effect on the Disney share price as well. But what 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:48.320 does it tell us about the industry that the numbers 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:52.040 now can get so big so quickly. I feel like 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:56.760 it's a combination of two factors. One is a trend 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:01.000 of globalization in the movies, which is droven mainly by 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:04.840 the opening of China. Over the past you know, decade 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:07.760 or more, um, your Hollywood studios have been able to 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:10.960 import their films into China with restrictions, you know, and 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:13.399 with the current talks between the US and China, there 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:16.880 is hope that that might open up even further. So 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:22.560 China is the second biggest movie market globally and is expected, 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:24.800 has been expected for a little while, to overtake the 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:28.080 US at some point. M So that's a really important 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:31.040 driver in terms of the numbers. The other thing is 0:23:31.640 --> 0:23:36.600 a trend in content where we've seen the strategy of 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:40.959 studios shift from one where you'd have what Warner Brothers 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:44.040 still does now, which is says do something like, you know, 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:46.879 twenty to thirty movies a year, which can vary in 0:23:46.960 --> 0:23:49.400 size from the big blockbuster that might cost a couple 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.720 of hundred million dollars two smaller films you know, maybe 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:56.680 twenty million dollars and cater to a range of audiences. 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:01.280 Disney has become the far and away massive leader in 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:07.639 this industry by focusing on known branded content, if you like, 0:24:07.800 --> 0:24:13.160 known intellectual property Marvel, Star Wars, pixar Um, and its 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:16.960 own classics to release maybe ten films a year, and 0:24:17.000 --> 0:24:18.560 each of those are just very big. So they do 0:24:18.600 --> 0:24:21.880 a smaller number of very big bets and they've cornered 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:24.000 the market. I mean, they have something like you know 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:27.640 of the box office, and that's before they bought twentieth 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:30.760 Century Fox last year. I mean from thinking about it 0:24:30.760 --> 0:24:32.560 as an economist, and actually some of the things we've 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:36.960 talked about already on Stephonomics is the nature of globalization 0:24:37.119 --> 0:24:40.280 and what it does to the corporate sector, the nature 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:43.560 of companies, but also what it does to distribution of 0:24:43.640 --> 0:24:47.080 incomes worldwide. I mean, just on the company side, the 0:24:47.119 --> 0:24:49.280 fact that we now have a world and I guess 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:52.080 technology has been part of this, but technology combined with 0:24:52.119 --> 0:24:56.680